Erica Hoke explains secondary infertility: why you can get pregnant once but struggle the second time. She covers C-section adhesions, Factor V Leiden, low progesterone, autoimmune conditions, thyroid dysfunction, and infections like ureaplasma that doctors often miss.
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One of the things that I frequently hear in the infertility world is, I have a child, why can't I have another one? Why can't I get pregnant again? Secondary infertility is so frustrating for so many women, and I'm here to tell you today a few points about things to look into and test, to, uh, talk to your practitioner about, uh, to move you, uh, forward in your infertility journey and get that that, um, subsequent child of your dreams, right? So let's get started. So the first thing that I want you to look into, um, is any trauma associated with your previous delivery, especially if you had a C-section. Um, there could be adhesions and there could be scar tissue either on your cervix or internally with adhesions, uh, with your tubes to your uterus or your tubes to your ovaries or any of those kind of things. So you you may or may not be symptomatic, but it's definitely worth having a conversation with your practitioner, your OB-GYN, about. And if you are symptomatic, if you're having painful periods, if you're having, um, any other dramatic, um, symptoms, then you definitely want to take a look at that, right? So the next thing that I want you to take a look at is if, if you're experiencing secondary infertility, is something called Factor V Leiden. Now, Factor V Leiden is a clotting disorder, and this is a really confusing um, thing. It's a really confusing disorder for people to have because it can cause secondary infertility. And people think that, hey, if I had a blood clot, wouldn't I have had it with my first pregnancy? Wouldn't I have had symptoms or a blood clot other than just not being able to get pregnant? And that's not always the case. Um, Your body handles estrogen less well as it ages. And so you could have had a first pregnancy and a healthy child in your 20s and then waited a few years and now you're in your 30s or your late 30s, or maybe you're even pushing 40. And this secondary infertility, um, is because you want a third or fourth child and you're not able to get pregnant. So Factor V Leiden can cause clotting of the embryonic roots and implanting into the uterus, and that can cause secondary infertility. It's a simple blood test, and, um, you can talk to your doctor about that. So the other thing that affects, uh, women also as they age is your progesterone drops. Progesterone is super important to fertility and to maintaining a healthy pregnancy. So often when you can't get pregnant, you're having chemical pregnancies and you don't know it. Maybe you had those pregnancy symptoms sore boobs, bloating, late period, and then you never got a positive pregnancy test, but man, you sure felt pregnant. That could be because of low progesterone, and you're actually not, um, producing enough of the hormone to get a positive pregnancy test, um, and having chemical pregnancies. So I would go ahead and talk to your practitioner about that. And the last thing I'm going to talk to you about today are undiagnosed autoimmune conditions, um, especially in secondary infertility. If you've seen me, um, in any of my videos, I frequently talk about thyroid disorder and thyroid disease because your thyroid range is huge. And what you want to do is you want to get a range that's personalized for yourself. You don't want to just take it for granted that you're in range. You want to make sure that you're not symptomatic and that you go to a um, a level, a thyroid level. You track your own thyroid level. That's what I'm trying to say. Go back and track your own thyroid level and make sure that it's not declining, because it could be here before you got pregnant, or when you got pregnant the first time, and now it's way down here, but it's still in range. But that's clearly not in range for you, which was way over here 3 years ago, 5 years ago, or something like that. So you want to make sure that you are getting that good range for yourself, that personalized optimized thyroid range. Along with that and with additional testing is that you want to get, make sure that you get any autoimmune tests that you may or may not have developed after a pregnancy. And you want to look for things like bacterial vaginosis and ureaplasma. That could cause vaginal infection and definitely limit your ability to have a second or subsequent third or fourth child. If you like my content, go ahead and subscribe, and I will see you next time.
